


Jewish Values

by RuBecSo



Category: Boardwalk Empire
Genre: Angst, Antisemitism, Character Study, Dissociation, Gen, Period Typical Slurs, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Trauma, Violence, historical fiction - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:16:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23759728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RuBecSo/pseuds/RuBecSo
Summary: Series of six vignettes from Meyer's life, from childhood to old age.Inspired by a jokey Tumblr post. Don't be fooled though; this is pretty much all angst.
Relationships: Meyer Lansky & Benny "Bugsy" Siegel, Meyer Lansky/Lucky Luciano
Comments: 13
Kudos: 14





	1. Remaining Alive

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by [this Tumblr post about things Judaism values.](https://captainlordauditor.tumblr.com/post/173994143123/things-judaism-values-in-order) Each chapter will correspond to an item on the list. There's going to be one chapter set during the series itself, but the rest will be drawing more heavily from Lansky's biographies.

Grodno, 1912

Jake is slightly too tall for hiding under the table. Meyer cleared it fine, but his brother hit his head when he pulled him under with him. He’s already two inches taller; sometimes people forget he’s the younger one. 

(It’s okay. Meyer knows. That’s what matters.)

His face is buried in Meyer’s chest and he’s wailing. It’s a continuous noise, broken only when he stops to take a breath. It’s mostly wordless, but sometimes it takes the shape of ‘Mama’ or even ‘Tate’. 

He’s forgotten what Mama tells them every night: _‘He’s in America. He’ll send for us soon.’_ Zayde Benjamin overheard her once and scoffed. _‘Is that how the saying goes now? Next year in America?’_

Meyer hasn’t forgotten. He always listens. Right now the last thing she said to him is burned into his mind like the after-image of a candle flame:

_‘Stay here. Don’t move.’_

Through the gap under the tablecloth, he can see Zayde. He’s on his hands and knees. Blood trickles down the side of his face. He can see Mama’s feet where she’s helping him up. She steps carefully around the debris scattered across the floor: shards of glass, the blue and white fragments of a smashed Seder plate and, in the middle of it all, a single brick. 

Heavy footfalls come from outside, followed by another crash. Another broken window. It’s from down the street, but it’s enough to bring Jake’s bawling to a pitch. He squirms in Meyer’s arms, trying to wriggle free. Meyer’s grip tightens instinctively.

“Jakeleh.” 

(Stay here.)

He makes another attempt to crawl away. Meyer pins him to the floorboards with all the force in his skinny body, fingers digging into his shoulders, cheek pressed against his brother’s forehead, eyes squeezed shut.

(Don’t move.)

The words run through his head (stay here, don’t move, stay here, don’t move). He isn’t sure when he starts saying them out loud, doesn’t notice he’s doing it until they’ve blended together and lost their meaning, and maybe Jake’s still crying but he can’t hear anything outside his own voice and part of him (the part that’s watching from either deep inside his head or a few feet outside of it) wonders if he’s praying…

“Meyer. Meyer.”

There’s a hand on his shoulder. He opens his eyes. It takes him a couple of seconds to recognise Mama’s face.

“Are you okay?” She’s shaking him. “Are you hurt?”

He blinks, looks around. Jake’s curled up in the crook of her other arm, sniffling. Zayde is sitting down, holding a handkerchief to his head. The shards of glass and pottery have been swept away. The brick’s nowhere to be seen. The sound of boots has faded.

“No,” someone else says, “are you?”

(Not someone else. He said that.)

Mama looks surprised for a moment, then shakes her head.

“No. No, I’m fine. It’s okay.” She goes to pull him into a hug. He flinches; her eyes widen. “You’re sure you’re not hurt?” 

(She’s worried. He shouldn’t worry her more.)

“I’m sure.” 

He leans into her arms, letting her hold him for as long as he can stand it, before pulling slowly away.

“Jake hit his head,” he says as he crawls out from under the table. 

He needs to find the bits of himself and put them back together, and he needs to be alone when he does.


	2. Learning

New York, 1914

It’s not the first time Meyer’s sat out on the fire escape with hunger gnawing at him. He’s always hungry, recently. His mother says it means he’s growing, though he’s seen little evidence of it yet. She gives him extra meat and pretends it isn’t from her own portion. 

(And what does he give her in return?)

Usually he’d ignore it, or at least try to. He’d read or do sums or recite something he has memorised, anything to distract himself from the nuisance of having a body to feel hunger in the first place. Not tonight though. Tonight he lets himself feel it. It’s only right.

(He made her cry. She trusted him and he made her cry.)

Not that that’s all he thinks about. Meyer always has at least one extra topic running in the back of his mind. As the sky grows dark and the growling in his stomach grows louder, he plays those few minutes over and over again. The pile of nickels and dimes on the sidewalk, the clink of his ( _not his_ ) nickel joining them, the clatter of the dice, the groans from the circle of gamblers, the pile of coins disappearing into the game-runner’s pockets.

Maybe it was just bad luck. Even if you understand the math (he _does_ understand it, he’s sure he does, he’s not _stupid_ ), you can still fall foul of the probability margins. But the more he thinks about it, remembering how that coin pile grew until _just_ the right moment for the game-runner to scoop it up, the more certain he is that those margins were a little wider than they should have been.

By the time Max comes out to speak to him, Meyer has his plan.

“Have you learned your lesson?” 

His voice is quiet. Not in that low, dangerous way some fathers speak as they remove their belts. He doesn’t sound like he’s holding something back. He just sounds tired.

(He’s so weak it makes Meyer want to throw up.)

He lifts his eyes but not his chin. When he meets Max’s gaze, he’d swear he sees him flinch. That’s happened a few times since they got here. It’s as though his father looks too deep into his eyes, looks past them and down into his chest, and catches a glimpse of something sharp and cold, something that wasn’t there when he said goodbye to him in Grodno.

Meyer doesn’t break his gaze.

( _That’s right. You left us there too long._ )

“Yes.”

Presumably, he’s supposed to have learned that gambling isn’t worth it. Which is almost right. It isn’t worth being the gambler. The real money’s in controlling the game. 

He’s learned his lesson alright. He’s learning lessons every day.


	3. Being a Fighty Bitch

New York, 1916

His hands shake as they grip the handles of the cooking pot. His white knuckles press into the ceramic. It’s hot from the cholent inside.

“What ya got there, Jew boy?”

His head snaps from side to side, searching for a gap in the circle of jeering boys.

“Whatsa matter? Got nothin’ to say?”

He should have been paying attention, should have seen the Irish gang closing in, should have ducked out of the way before they could surround him.

“Hey Christ-killer, I’m talkin’ to you.”

The leader grabs Meyer by the shoulder and spins him around, looking down at him from the six inches or so he has on him.

“Pull down his trousers!” 

Part of him wishes Benny was there; they might not have singled him out. But then, if Benny were there Meyer would probably be holding him back right now.

“Yeah! See if they cut him right.”

He tells himself what he would have told Benny:  _ Find a way out. Don’t be stupid. Live to fight another day. _

“Maybe we finish the job, huh?” 

The leader leans in close. Sunlight flashes off the knife in his hands.

Sometimes your body acts before your brain does. Like when you snatch your hand away from a hot stove. Perhaps this is one of those times. Perhaps in that split second some part of him, some quiet, watchful corner of his mind, weighs up his options and makes the decision for him. Perhaps that part of him figures that he’s going to have to make a hole if he’s going to escape, and even then he won’t outrun them if he’s carrying the cholent pot, and perhaps one of these problems provides the answer to the other. Perhaps it’s all very well to live to fight another day, but perhaps you also have to recognise when that day is today.

Or perhaps he just really wants to smash that sneering Mick’s face in.

The cooking pot collides with the kid’s head with a loud, wet crunch. He screams as hot stew and pottery fragments explode over both of them. Meyer staggers to his knees, the momentum of his upswing pulling him forward. The knife clatters to the ground. He scrambles for it, half-blind from the stew in his eyes. He grabs it just before another boy and slashes at his ankle. 

The initial shock wears off fast. The gang descends on him. He dodges and dives, kicking and punching in every direction. The leader is sprawled on the floor, blood and cholent trickling down his face. One boy grabs him, slamming him to the ground. Meyer kicks out and by dumb luck manages to land a blow in a sensitive spot. His head is pounding but he wriggles away. If he gets pinned it’s all over. 

He can’t fight them all. He just needs to last long enough to find a way out.

His chance comes with a yell from somewhere outside the bubble of fists and blood:

“Hey, what’s going on?”

He doesn’t have time to find out if it’s friend or foe, a cop or another hoodlum or just a concerned citizen. All he knows is it’s the split second of distraction he needs. While the other boys are looking around for the shout’s source, he drags himself to his feet and runs.

He doesn’t remember much of the journey back. When he tries, his recollection places him outside of himself, watching from a few feet away as he staggered down the crowded streets, though he knows such a viewpoint can’t be a true memory. If the people passing by paid any mind to the bruised kid caked in a mixture of stew and drying blood, they didn’t consider it their business. He’s fairly sure he stopped to throw up a couple times.

Halfway up the stairs to his family’s tenement, lights flash in his vision, pain swells at the back of his head, and he has to lean on the wall for a minute. He climbs the rest of the way with one hand on the wall and the other groping for the steps ahead. 

He has something he needs to do. Something important. Though he can’t quite remember what it is, he’s sure it involves getting to the top of these stairs.

He’s aware that his mother starts screaming when she sees him, but in the same way he’s aware Woodrow Wilson is the President. It’s important to know, but it’s not immediately relevant. He has something he needs to do. Just as he’s wondering what it is, he realises he’s kneeling by the bed he shares with Jake, pulling away the loose bit of skirting board, and reaching behind for the bag he has stashed there. 

He tips out a handful of nickels and dimes. He stares at them for a couple of seconds. Then he looks up at his mother. She’s stopped screaming. He watches himself hold out the handful of coins.

“Here,” someone says, “We need a new cholent pot.”

The next thing he’s aware of is waking up, in a clean shirt, with a bandage on his head. 

Word gets around, of course. On the Lower East Side, everyone knows who’s fought whom and who came out the better. With the odds having been so uneven and the weapon so unconventional, it’s hardly surprising when people start asking  _ ‘Hey, was that you… y’know, with the cooking pot…?’ _

He settles on a rule. If the person asking is a gentile, he denies it. No point inviting more trouble than comes his way already. But if they’re a Jew, he’ll allow himself a sly smile and a turn of his head and let them catch his meaning. He sticks to that rule for most of the summer. 

When he finally breaks it, it’s for Salvatore Lucania.


	4. Spite

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a time jump with this one. The next two will have pretty big jumps too; just the way it worked out when I was deciding what to write for each vignette. Funnily enough this is the only one that takes place during the actual series (after 'Friendless Child', specifically).
> 
> There's a bit of Yiddish. It's translated at the end. 
> 
> Enjoy :)

New Jersey, 1931

The diner is almost deserted. Not surprising, given the late hour. What few patrons there are know better than to pay much mind to the trio in tailored suits who came in smelling of blood and gunpowder. No one bothered them as they made their way to a table in the corner. No one commented on the obvious injury of the dishevelled, wild-eyed one, limping and leaning heavily on the scarred one with the stony glare. The waitress delivered their order of steak and eggs swiftly and then left them well alone.

Still, Meyer wishes Benny would lower his voice.

“That was fuckin’ perfect.”

(That makes it eleven times he’s proclaimed this since they drove away, by Meyer’s count.)

“When we was doing the handover, and I saw you lookin’ at me, and you saw what I was gonna do, and I pulled that falling trick and you grabbed the kid... that was fuckin’ perfect, Charlie.”

(Twelve times.)

“And you!” He gestures at Meyer, ice clinking in his glass of water as he almost knocks it over. “You with your ‘I’d like to see him on his knees’. Fuckin’ genius!”

Meyer glances at Charlie from across the table. A smile wrinkles the corners of his eyes. Meyer gets his meaning.  _ Let him babble. No one’s listening, and he’ll settle soon. _

It’s Benny’s way, they both know that. The head-rush has always affected him differently. For Meyer, violence is a purgative; it leaves him empty, quiet, small. For Benny it fills him up, so much so he spills over and expands to fill whatever room he’s in.  _ That boy, _ Yetta said once,  _ his soul is too big for his body.  _

When they were younger, Charlie would have been right there with him, the two of them fuelling one another and spinning out that rush for as long as it would last, leaving Meyer to his quiet, internal re-organising. But times have changed. Meyer only needs to catch Charlie’s eye to know that.

Benny knows it too, Meyer’s sure of it. He can see it in the cloud of disappointment that flickers across his face as he leans back and sighs.

“Kinda wish we’d popped him right there.”

“Benny…” Meyer begins, but he puts up a hand to stop him.

“Nah, nah, I get it.” He leans in again and grins. “’ _ Eyn umglik iz far im veynik _ ’, right?”

“That’s not it, Benny.” Meyer sets down his knife and fork with a soft clink. “We need him alive for now. That’s all.”

Benny scoffs. “Please. You telling me you ain’t enjoying this?”

“That’s…” 

Meyer was going to say that wasn’t true. But then he remembers.

(The look on Nucky’s face as the realisation that he had nothing left to bargain with washed over him. The feeling of the words in his mouth — “ _ I think I’d like to see him on his knees” _ — usually it takes until the gunshots have faded in his ears for his voice to start sounding like his own again, but not this time. This time the words felt so solid, so precise, so much  _ under his control _ that it was like his voice had never really been his own until that moment. Then the sight of Nucky kneeling in the dirt, like those words had been some kind of magic spell.)

There is no magic, of course. Only power slipping through an old man’s fingers to be claimed by the young and the vicious. He could tell Benny that it was just a necessary bit of ceremony, a story to be spread to friends and foes alike so they know with whom that power now sits. He could tell him getting caught up in the performance was how you ended up like that delusional wannabe-emperor Maranzano, and anyway  _ he _ wasn’t dead yet either, so they really shouldn’t lose sight of the work still to be done.

He could tell him all that and it would all be true. But it wouldn’t change the fact that, when Meyer pictures that look on Nucky Thompson’s face, his heart skips a beat and he has to concentrate not to smile like a fool.

He glances at Benny, who's beaming in triumph at having made him stumble. Then back at Charlie, a lopsided smile tugging at his cheek, something of the old mischief peeping out from behind his scars and drooping eye. They’d both know he was lying.

“…that’s not the point.” He pushes his plate away and brushes the crumbs off his hands. “Finish your eggs.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yiddish translation:
> 
> 'Eyn umglik iz far im veynik' = 'One misfortune is too few for him'
> 
> (One of the more straightforward of Yiddish curses.)


End file.
